Tag Archive | "Short"

There is nothing short of a revolution happening in the food marketplace today and it is not a quiet one, says Walter Robb, the former co-CEO of Whole Foods. “It is disrupting things left and right, all the way up the value chain back into the farmer’s field,” says Robb.

Walter Robb, former co-CEO of Whole Foods, discusses the revolution happening in the food marketplace in an interview on CNBC:

Nothing Short of a Revolution Happening in the Food Marketplace

There is nothing short of a revolution happening in the food marketplace today and it is not a quiet one. It is disrupting things left and right, all the way up the value chain back into the farmer’s field. For me, to see these (organic) brands and to see it show up at the Super Bowl, the biggest media stage of the world, is kind of an exciting thing.

Some 75 percent of the food we eat is from 12 plants. Somebody’s woken up to that realizing, wow, there’s a whole lot of stuff that we can create from stuff we don’t even know yet. The Natural Food Expo, which is the next month in LA, 85,000 people are going to that show. This is where the energy and the edge of the food industry is at right now.

We’ve broken into this area now where there’s an amazing amount of innovation with young companies and entrepreneurs. This is where the growing edge of the food industry is now. It’s not just natural and organic but it’s this innovation around new foods and new food types.

Amazing Amount of Innovation With Entrepreneurs

You have to build the tools to really understand your customer personally. I think it’s pretty exciting to see what’s happening. On the physical side, Walmart is doing a lot of things, Kroger is doing a lot of things, and Whole Foods is doing a lot of things to try to integrate digital and physical retail in a way that gives the customer a very rich experience.

I do think in terms of the food service delivery, Grubhub has had phenomenal growth. What’s happened is the world has woken up to how exciting food is again. We kind of went along after World War two for a number of years with this kind of dull drum of production, just regular stuff with the major CPG brands.

If you get a $ 5 latte and it’s probably a $ 5 delivery charge at what point does the customers say that’s a great value problem? I don’t know, but I think we’re going to find out. I do think this idea that the customer wants the convenience is here to stay and that they’re used to having that option. In some cases, they will choose it. Where that line is it’s too early to say exactly where they’ll say, that’s too expensive or that’s not a good deal.

How was your long weekend? Or, if you don’t live in the States, how was it watching all your U.S. pals enjoy the long weekend? This was Labor Day week in the U.S., which means about half of my compatriots are running around this morning thinking it’s Wednesday, the other half think it’s Friday already, Read More…

4. Write a 100-word article using only simple sentences

Revisit exercise number one above, but this time, limit your sentences to no more than four or five words. And don’t forget about single-word sentences.

Short and snappy will be the sound you hear when you read the article aloud.

Here’s what 52 words look like:

Dorothy watched the rhino. It sniffed the pumpkin. She sneezed. The rhino raised its head. Snorted. Dorothy waved. The rhino pawed the earth. She threw a high heel. It hit the rhino. The rhino ate the shoe. She yelled, “Hey!” Stomped her foot. “That was my shoe!” The rhino ate the pumpkin.

5. Describe a topic in a sonnet

This is another variation on exercise number one where you explain a broad or complex subject within the framework of a sonnet.

Here is my attempt at describing grief:

Everyone knows about love, but no one

really understands how it works. Death,

on the other hand, is pretty cut and dry.

And you can’t fight it off any more than

a small boy waiting up for his alcoholic

father can fight off sleep — it just arrives,

crashing through the blossoms, upsetting

a table, chairs. And you don’t need the Royal

Society of Medicine to tell you

what you already know: no one gets out alive.

What you need is someone to explain why,

when someone dies you’re unglued in an

apocalyptic way, cold as a urinal,

stiff like iron stairs and desperate to die.

As you can see, you don’t have to rhyme or get the perfect iambic pentameter for each line; just get your story into 14 lines and aim for about 10 syllables per line.

This will teach you how to write within boundaries, and you’ll learn a little about poetry, which can help define your style.

6. Describe a topic using the PAS formula

PAS stands for Problem-Agitate-Solve, and the formula helps you limit your idea to only two sentences or fewer per element.

It looks like this:

Insecure? Don’t worry; you’re not alone. However, stay that way and you’ll never accomplish anything of significance. Fortunately, there’s a book called Insecure No More, which will teach you how to be confident and courageous in just 30 days. Buy it now.

There was a period in my career when I had to write hundreds of succinct product descriptions.

The same is true when I wrote dozens of text ads for a long-running Google AdWords campaign. Without this formula, I would’ve struggled.

Your job is to look at 10 products or ideas you love and then write about them using PAS.

Now let’s look at a few tips about removing unnecessary words from your sentences.

Cut redundant words

Here are two different versions of similar phrases:

“Added bonus” and “Bonus”

“We currently have vacant rooms” and “We have vacant rooms”

“Get to the point as quickly as possible” and “Get to the point”

All the italicized words waste space. They are useless.

We write this way because we often talk this way. We think we add severity by saying “Get to the point as quickly as possible.”

But when someone says, “Get to the point,” don’t we always snap to attention?

It’s like a crack of the whip.

Avoid modifiers

Modifiers clutter up your copy. The following italicized words are modifiers:

“That’s fairly good copy.”

“I totally understand.”

“Actually, that’s not what I meant.”

You can eliminate every single word I italicized without losing your meaning.

In fact, you can create a stronger sentence by replacing both the modifier and the word it modifies with a more detailed description or a stronger, more accurate word.

Eliminate the word “make”

The next time you write a first draft, review your document and count how many times you use the word “make” before you edit your text. My hunch is it will be a lot.

There are many elements to take into account when you are determining how you will brand your podcast. Don’t overlook the psychological impact of the colors you choose.

In this Showrunner Short, Jerod Morris delivers a quick lesson on the oft-overlooked importance of color psychology in podcast branding. It matters both for your podcast’s artwork and for the overall branding of your platform.

How do you want your content to make your audience feel? What kind of emotional connection are you trying to make?

Your color choices should fall in line with the answers to these questions.

And different colors deliver distinctly different emotional impacts, which Jerod runs down in this episode.

After writing the first draft of a new Copyblogger post last week, I noticed something interesting.

I wrote the conclusion, then looked at the word count (which was just slightly under 700 words) and thought, “What can I do to make this longer?”

My articles for Copyblogger typically run between 1500 and 2000 words. After drafting this shorter piece, I wondered if something was wrong. I thought perhaps I needed to come up with another piece of evidence for my idea, or an additional example to illustrate my point.

Then I stopped myself.

Online content does not need to be lengthy in order to be substantial. Stop writing once you’ve fully communicated your point — don’t keep writing for the sake of getting to some prescribed word count.

Yes, many long posts do very well online. Some of Copyblogger’s epic posts have been shared thousands of times across social media, and they often attract a lot of comments, too.

But remember that Brian Clark built this very site on a foundation of incisive posts on blogging and copywriting, and most of his early posts weren’t epic length essays. Many of them were well under a thousand words.

Some of the articles from his now legendary Copywriting 101 series were under 500 words.

So please, don’t use more words when fewer words will do just fine. If you’re stuffing your articles with fluff, you might make your precious word count, but you’ll lose your audience.

Thomas Jefferson once said:

Never use two words when one will do.

And, let’s not forget that one of the most widely-read bloggers in the world is famous, in large part, for his brevity.

There’s certainly a time and a place for writing in-depth content, lengthy sales letters, and thoughtful essays. But no matter what you’re writing, you need to write as little — or as much — as it takes to fully explain your position and persuade your reader.

There’s room in your content strategy for short, concise articles. Good writers know how to craft long and short content, and they’ve mastered the art of knowing which one to use in every writing circumstance.

So, consider this a reminder to keep short posts handy in your writing toolbox. Many in your audience will thank you for it.